When a game is "Free" then "YOU" are the product

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

Or 'there are always strings attached'?

Speaking of strings and their attachments, I did find it interesting how CW and GGG walked the tightrope of exactly where your "supporter" money was going over the years.

Was it for payroll? Was it for Development? Was it for Rent? Was it striaght into the founders pockets? What exactly does "support" mean in context compared to a typical sales product or MTX in a game?

I remember this turning a bit ugly when the console development of PoE was happneing. PC players were asking if their contributions were actually going to fund a platform that wouldn't benefit them. That's where "supporter" got very grey. CW tried to scramble a bit and said it was "different teams", but in a company with one game that made no sense in practicality.

Idk maybe its semantics, but using "supporter" money does tend to give the impression that we should know what we are supporting exactly, which is unusual in the industry.

They have gotten better at qualifying this now, simply saying that "supporter" money funds ongoing development of PoE1 and PoE2, which is admittedly vague, but probably somewhat necessary of you want to call your sales product "support".

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1453R wrote:

The point is that racing was not and should not have been a consideration at all. Racers are a miniscule minority of an ARPG's playerbase, and they're also always among the most diehard and dedicated sorts who can be expected to get in on early access.

I doubt it is "miniscule" minority, as many people have participated. Well, plenty of people purchased it earlier either because they were real "racers", felt that they could do it, those who just wanted to be part of the race, and those participating because of fomo. I would say it was a reasonable size of group, probably way bigger than PoE racing community (EDIT: what am I saying, for sure bigger, as most of PoE racers participated too). So to this extent it was p2w, as 3 days of preparation to know, test and practice best leveling methods goes a long way. Imagine adding new boss to poe and letting people to pay for 3 days of practice, then starting official race.

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1453R wrote:

Making the game actively worse for twenty thousand people to every one guy who is minorly inconvenienced by a thing is not great. There does, in fact, come a point where "THIS IS PEE TWO DUBBLEYOO!!" is no longer really valid. is early acxcess in general kinda scummy? Yes. Are there nevertheless valid reasons to do a tiered launch, especially for a game expected to have day-one concurrence numbers in the millions? Absolutely.

Mostly it was praying on FOMO, as some people would be forced to just watch their friends or fav streamers. I would disagree with word "kinda", as I would say it was very scummy, it also seems to start a trend for this kind of actions: https://thewarwithin.blizzard.com/en-us/
In case of WoW it seems it is even bigger, isn't it?

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1453R wrote:

I am reminded of Fatshark's release of Darktide, wherein they did a two-odd week staggered launch, rolling out features one by one rather than dropping everything at once, and actively advertised their preorder/early access as a way for players to help them stress test things prior to full release to minimize the amount of game-ruining bugs and server glitches the game would experience on launch. That was a proper way of doing the thing, and I was happy to help.

Did it give me an "advantage" over people who didn't pay for the pre-launch rollout? Yes. Oh well. That's the payment I receive for playing the game before it's quite finished cooking.

Darktide doesn't seems to be competitive tho, right? I haven't played it, so I can't speak for certain, but if it is similar to Vermintide, it is a coop thing, right? How is it now btw? I was considering buying it some time ago, but ended up doing something else, I'd like to know more as this is a game on my radar.

Never confuse me for someone who doesn't know how to google or isn't apt to do so before making a claim. Or, for that matter, someone who doesn't understand basic Latin. Try to remember which monster I added to the game.

___

Diabloski: you know, I never really cared. It was a matter of trust that my support went to whatever was needed to work on the game and even now I don't believe they ever betrayed that trust. But if it helps, here are a few facts for you:

CW didn't pay himself in the first stages of development. I can't recall when that changed but it was after I started supporting.
He lived in a house I can only call humble.
He didn't own a car because he didn't drive.
They didn't have the budget for a booth or much presence at PAX AUS in 2013, but by the time they could afford one they didn't need it.
Pretty sure the most valuable thing he owned was his magic card collection, which was pretty impressive but clearly well underway by the time PoE was a thing.

Which is all to say, he certainly wasn't pocketing much of it. Everything went into PoE. Money. Energy. Time.

If people didn't trust GGG to use their support money for the betterment of PoE, they probably shouldn't have supported.

I don't care if we're talking PC, console, mobile, Chinese mainland expansion efforts, ExileCon...press tours...once that money leaves your hands, it's theirs. Period.

People ask if I ever have buyer's remorse and I am sort of baffled by that. It's not like I bought something and didn't get exactly what I paid for. It's not like I didn't get years of use out of it. And all sorts of crazy experiences along the way. I have more buyer's remorse about certain books I should have fucking researched before purchasing than I do a cent of my GGG/PoE support.

So dude, does it really matter where it went? We know where a chunk of it goes now. Was that my personal threshold? Probably. But you'll notice that that has nothing to do with how GGG spends it -- obligations to shareholders/owners isn't an allocation of business operation resources any more than rent is optional. I suppose in a way my personal threshold was knowing that my support money wasn't ultimately going to GGG and its cluster of private shareholders, the bulk of whom were, of course, GGG.

It's similar to how I try not to invest in companies that I know are owned by certain megacorps. Regardless of profit potential. Everyone has their code, flawed as it almost certainly is.

__

This thread is too dangerous now. I have no desire to risk my posting rights over it. I have bigger fish to fry elsewhere. Outs.

Meh - agree to disagree. Splitting hairs at this point.

edit

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Jerexil wrote:

I guess this about "PoE is F2P, not free":

You need some stash space to play comfortably with 1-2 chars.
That means about 30 EUR or $ to start playing in maps (= atlas).

Stash tabs:
a) currency
b) map
c) 1-2 premium for trade (and comments)
d) 6? normal

And you need much more to play with more chars.

So I say POE reaches the price of an "normal" AAA game (without expensive DLCs) after some dozen hours if you want some QoL.

I think that is fair, though you have spend money but did not own a software product and have less rights because of this.

Edit:
Read the "real" answer. It has another focus than I guessed.

PoE is Free To Play but Pay For Convenience.

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hasatt0 wrote:

Pretty sure someone made the same thread some time ago.

All threads are like that.

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Nomancs wrote:

[...]
So to this extent it was p2w, as 3 days of preparation to know, test and practice best leveling methods goes a long way. Imagine adding new boss to poe and letting people to pay for 3 days of practice, then starting official race.
[...]

I'm still going to insist that there is a gaping chasm between games where one can """pay-to-win""" for faster personal progress, and those where one can 'pay-to-win' to hurt the progress of competitors.

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BlueTemplar85 wrote:

"

Nomancs wrote:

[...]
So to this extent it was p2w, as 3 days of preparation to know, test and practice best leveling methods goes a long way. Imagine adding new boss to poe and letting people to pay for 3 days of practice, then starting official race.
[...]

I'm still going to insist that there is a gaping chasm between games where one can """pay-to-win""" for faster personal progress, and those where one can 'pay-to-win' to hurt the progress of competitors.

Oh, I'm not comparing those, just saying it occurred.

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